The harrowing stories of that night tell a heartbreaking tale of what was lost, and who should have known better.

OAKLAND — Max Ohr considered himself the creative director, the “go-to guy,” the “camp counselor” at the Ghost Ship warehouse, and on that Friday night, he was also the doorman.

He had spent the day getting ready for an electronic music party upstairs, arranging the sound system and cleaning up the fantastical bohemian space where he and about two dozen of his fellow artists lived. Before 9 p.m., the lanky jewelry maker with a scraggly beard and crescent tattoo on his cheekbone began welcoming visitors. They arrived in small groups, more than 100 guests in all from a tight-knit music and art scene — a transgender barista, a 35-year-old therapist who helped at-risk kids, a father of twin daughters, a couple in their 20s, he with a pencil-thin mustache, she with green glitter sparkling on her cheeks.

As they entered this one-of-a-kind sanctuary to Oakland’s creative culture, they followed the pulsating beat to the second floor, up the single-file staircase made of scrap wood and pallet planks to a dance party promising good vibes and good friends.

Max Ohr, a jewelry maker and Ghost Ship resident, who served as doorman the night of the fire. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

“I greeted almost every single person who walked through that door,” said Ohr, 26, “and I’m usually the one who says goodbye to them at the end of the night as well.”

On this night, he would be screaming for them to escape.

On this night, Ohr would be the doorman to an epic tragedy, Oakland’s deadliest fire ever.

This was no natural disaster, no earthquake, no terrorist shooting. This disaster was avoidable; 36 people were victims not just of the smoke and fire, but of recklessness, bureaucracy and indifference.

The harrowing stories of that night — from those who made it out, those who traded panicked texts, and those who tried to help — tell a heartbreaking tale of what was lost and who should have known better.

The invitation to the party in the warehouse on 31st Avenue in Oakland’s Fruitvale district spread on social media.

Local promoter Jon Hrabko had been drumming up excitement for the Dec. 2 event on Facebook for a week: “invite as many of your friends as possible and share this event on your page for maximum visibility.” With a lineup of popular DJs creating pounding techno beats, the show was typical of Oakland’s trendy off-the-grid electronic music scene found on rooftops and in warehouses. “They can limit our invites but Not gonna let them limit our fun,” Hrabko wrote. “We shall rise up, overcome, and dance on the ruins. Stay safe out there.”

Oakland DJ Johnny Igaz, who goes by the stage name Nackt, had posted that he would be performing: “really looking forward to breaking the seal with this one on Friday!” The cover charge was $15.

At 7:44 p.m. Hrabko posted a last-minute “BYOB folks.” Ara Jo, an Oakland artist, added that she would be filling in for a hairstylist who backed out, trimming bangs for partygoers for $5 while her friend Kiyomi Tanouye, who worked for the music app Shazam, “will be doing nails!”

Photos before the fire show a one-of-a-kind an elaborate, eclectic exhibit of carvings, mannequins, paintings, second-hand furniture and tapestries. (www.oaklandghostship.com)

For those who had never been to the Ghost Ship, the space was a wonder of wood, an elaborate, eclectic exhibit of carvings, mannequins, paintings, Balinese artwork, second-hand furniture and Indian tapestries. Musicians, tattooists, clothing designers and sculptors lived in alcoves carved out of the 10,000-square-foot space. One of them called it “everything in my life that was beautiful and brought me joy.”

If the Ghost Ship were a temple, Derick Almena, 46, was its high priest. The charismatic eccentric had leased the warehouse for at least three years from Chor N. Ng, the building’s longtime owner. Almena lived on the second floor with his wife and three young daughters who often ran around barefoot. The night of the party, they went to a hotel so the girls could get some sleep.

Almena collected rent from the resident artists, charging between $300 and $600 a month in a city where a one-bedroom apartment can go for more than $2,000. He told his tenants to say the warehouse was merely a 24-hour art studio, not their home. But photos show an AirStream trailer, campers and loft beds inside the warehouse among the art installations. Pianos were lined up as room dividers. Extension cords and cables snaked throughout the building. Propane tanks fueled a camping stove in the kitchen.

Visitors had called it a tower of kindling. It would become a funeral pyre.

The hundred or so guests likely didn’t know the warehouse had no sprinklers or smoke alarms, that it wasn’t permitted for either a living or event space, that neighbors had complained for years. They didn’t know city code enforcement inspectors had knocked on the door two weeks earlier and left when no one answered.

They didn’t know they had something to fear when they climbed that rickety staircase.

Upstairs, the music was thumping at 10:26 p.m. when Alex Ghassan, an Oakland father of twins, posted what would be his last video to Instagram: dark grainy images of the party just getting started. The sound of laughter echoed over the music.

A post shared by AlexG_Director (@alexg_director) on Dec 2, 2016 at 10:31pm PST

Alex Vega, 22, and Michela Gregory, 20, a couple who worked part time at a Daly City mortuary, came over from the Peninsula and lounged on a couch upstairs. One of them snapped a photo, capturing a darkened silhouette of the ornate decor. Gregory, a San Francisco State student, her face shimmering with glitter, loved to dance. They had been to the Ghost Ship at least once before.

As the party grew upstairs, about a dozen residents carried on with their evening downstairs. Anthony Perrault, 27, was listening to music with a friend. Nikki Kelber, 44, was with her cat in her studio up front. Carmen Brito, 28, had fallen asleep in bed, in the back of the building near where the fire started.

It was about 11:20 p.m. when the smell of smoke and a flickering orange glow woke her.

By the time she put on her boots and black wool coat, the glow had turned into a wall of fire. She yelled for help but didn’t think anyone could hear her. She took off running for the front door and fumbled with her cellphone to call 911. It was 11:23 p.m. when she made it outside.

Ohr, the doorman, had just left his post to walk down a hallway to the bathroom when he heard the voice of a young woman. Her tone was strange, questioning: “Is that a fire?”

A moment later, another woman’s voice, a little louder, a bit frantic, but not a scream: “Fire, fire!”

Ohr heard the crackling and saw the eerie glow. He raced to his studio through the maze he knew so well, and didn’t waste time with the lock. Instead, he kicked in the door and grabbed the biggest of the fire extinguishers he kept near his jewelry-making equipment. Perrault, who lived next to Ohr, grabbed his own fire extinguisher. With a third resident, they faced the fire.

The extinguishers might as well have been squirt guns to the inferno swirling up the rows of pianos and Tibetan screens and cotton tapestries, then sweeping in waves across the ceiling. The back of the building was in flames. The three men dropped their extinguishers and ran toward the front, screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” every step of the way.

Upstairs, Igaz, a 34-year-old voice-over artist at Pandora, had started his set, and people were dancing when thick smoke started funneling up the staircase. The music was loud, and many first assumed the smoke was coming from a fog machine. Most of the guests had no idea about another stairwell hidden behind the stage at the back of the building. It was one of the Ghost Ship’s “secret passages.”

With Ohr halfway to the front door, the power went out, cutting off the music and plunging everything into darkness. He fumbled for his phone in his pocket to call 911.

Billowing smoke knocked Kelber back from her studio at the front of the building. She opened a window but still couldn’t breathe. Within two minutes, she grabbed her cat and carrier and fled with “15-foot fireballs down the hallways coming toward me, moving fast.”

By the time she reached the front door 30 seconds later, she was dizzy and faint, but she kept running, her cat in her arms, a block and a half around the corner to Fire Station 13, yelling “Fire!”

Firefighters reached the Ghost Ship at 11:27 p.m., within three minutes of the first 911 call, according to a department tweet.

Ohr had made it back through the darkness to the place where he had started the night: the front door. Those around him shined their cellphone lights on the doorway as he screamed, “The door is this way!”

The front door kept swinging closed, so Ohr held it open, still bellowing so his voice could be heard — “the door is this way!” He said he watched as 20, 30, 50, maybe 70 people fled the fire to safety.

“It chased people to the door,” he would later say. “It was terrifying. It was the most hellish thing I’ve ever seen.

“After two minutes, no one else came out.”

He heard screams and pleas in the chaos. With the staircase in flames, someone jumped out a second-floor window. And in a heartbreaking message, a young woman managed to text her mother.

“I love you,” she wrote. “I’m going to die, Mom.”

Oakland fire Lt. Dan Robertson, a 27-year veteran and union president, had just rolled into bed and closed his eyes at Station 4 when the speaker blasted an alert: Warehouse fire, 1315 31st Ave. Even before the second alarm sounded, he knew he and his guys, just a mile and a half from the blaze, would be dispatched.

He slid down the pole, jumped in the rig and pulled on his heavy-duty turnouts as they passed the taquerias and laundromats of the Fruitvale district. As the truck crested a hill on International Boulevard, Robertson got his first glimpse of the Ghost Ship. Thick black smoke billowed from the roof.

“Hey, I know that building, it’s a maze inside, clustered, all (bleeped) up,” a fellow firefighter leaned over to tell Robertson. “It’s going to be really tough getting in, and I think we’re going to have to get defensive very early.”

At the same time, the Rev. Jayson Landeza, a chaplain for the Oakland Fire Department, was getting ready for bed in the rectory at St. Benedict’s Catholic Church on 82nd Avenue and Bancroft when he noticed the fire department’s first alert. When the second one was sent four minutes later — at 11:31 p.m. — announcing a “second alarm struck,” Landeza put back on his priest’s collar and headed out the door.

A third alarm went out seven minutes after that, and Landeza knew the fire was moving fast. On his way over in his old, black Crown Victoria, with his fire hat and jacket in the trunk, Landeza — like he always does — said a silent prayer: “Watch over everyone on scene.”

He thought he was only praying for firefighters.

The crew from Engine 13 around the corner from the warehouse had already entered the building when Robertson and his company arrived. The East Oakland native had battled many dangerous blazes over the past three decades, including the Oakland hills fire that killed 25 people a quarter century ago. He knew this was a bad one, with the kind of thick, ugly smoke that can knock someone down in a single breath. “The human instinct is to gasp for another breath,” he said, “and then you’re out.”

Robertson didn’t know anyone was inside when he strapped on his air tank. He and his crew crouched as they entered the front door, then dropped to their hands and knees to stay below the smoke. It was so dark, so thick with smoke, Robertson could see nothing. He only heard the crackling fire ahead and the familiar pinging of firefighters’ air tanks — a signal that the Engine 13 crew that arrived first was running low and needed to vacate soon.

Robertson had about 15 minutes on his tank as he tried to penetrate deeper into the building, searching for a staircase. But his helmet kept bumping into things, a piano bench here, a sculpture there. His gloved hands felt the way forward. A narrow path to the left. Five more feet and a dead end to the right. He pulled more than 50 feet of hose, but with his serpentine path, he barely advanced 20 feet.

“We had no choice but to zigzag through,” he said.

As his crew aimed the hoses to the ceiling, the water heated by the flames cascaded down like hot syrup seeping under his collar. Debris fell and timbers crackled. With his air running too low and the fire burning too hot, Robertson’s “mental alarm” started ringing and an image of Oakland firefighter Tracy Toomey streaked through his mind. In 1999, the 52-year-old was killed when the second story of a burning home collapsed on top of him.

About 30 minutes after the first firefighter arrived to the warehouse, Robertson heard the battalion chief’s radio call of retreat: “We’re going defensive!”

No firefighter ever found the main staircase. The one better suited for a tree house than a warehouse was consumed in minutes, officials would later confirm. The firefighters had no way to climb up, and the dancers and the DJs had no way to get down.

Ten minutes before midnight, Al Garcia’s sister called him at home in Alameda to tell him about the fire raging in the warehouse near his appliance store. He knew the spot for the junk piling up outside, the rooftop parties, the time he watched two guys remove air vents from the roof. He climbed out of bed and headed out the door.

Firefighters arrived at the Ghost Ship warehouse within minutes of the first call for help, but dozens of people were trapped on the second floor of the building and perished. (@Oaklandfirelive via AP)

The Garcias grew up in the Fruitvale district. He remembers back in the 1950s and ’60s when the Ghost Ship was the “Dairy Rich” milk processing plant. Garcia said he and his buddies “were rascals in the neighborhood.” They’d ride their Stingray bikes to the dairy, sneak in at night and wander through the rows of parked milk trucks. The warehouse never had a real staircase. Instead, a conveyor belt carried empty milk cans to the loft upstairs. They rode up and slid down.

Industry left the neighborhood long ago, he said, but the job he had as a teenager delivering appliances at Reed Supply on Fruitvale Avenue became his career when he and his brother, Rick, bought the business 42 years ago. His shop has barely changed, but the neighborhood around it has.

Fires destroyed a number of buildings over the years, including the liquor store on the corner where he used to buy sodas as a kid. International Boulevard, a half block away, became known as “The Track” for prostitution. The day of the Ghost Ship fire, Garcia’s brother got back from a delivery at 5:30 p.m. and found cops in their back parking lot arresting a guy who stole a car and fled. The police asked permission to climb on their roof to look for a bag of drugs the suspect may have tossed there.

Just three weeks earlier, the Garcia brothers were chatting in the store with City Councilman Noel Gallo. They had known each other for years. Gallo also grew up in the neighborhood, a few blocks away. While rents skyrocket in other parts of Oakland and old neighborhoods go upscale as Uber, Pandora and even Sunset Magazine move to town, the streets of Fruitvale are still known for trash and potholes. Gallo, his wife and other volunteers spend Saturday mornings cleaning up the garbage. The sidewalk in front of Ghost Ship was a frequent stop.

“We’ve got to do something about this, Noel,” the brothers said, telling him their concerns about the warehouse. “Someone’s going to get hurt.”

It was about 12:30 a.m. when Garcia, 62, arrived at the store with flames still shooting through warehouse windows. He found two teenagers at the store’s front door. One said he was 17, the other 18. The teens were upset as they told Garcia: “We were the last two to get out, but our friend is still in there.”

When the boys left to join other survivors, Garcia, shaken by their story, sat in his car with the heater on for two hours, watching the Ghost Ship’s windows break and the roof collapse.

Across from the warehouse, Landeza, the chaplain, helped the Red Cross hand out blankets and Chex Mix and Oreos. Survivors hugged and cried.

Landeza walked over to the command post. Even the firefighters looked stunned.

“Are you hearing what we’re hearing?” he asked them. “Up to 50, 100 people were at the party?’ We kept looking at each other.”

Across the Bay Area, cellphones were exploding with text messages.

“Yo (sic) hear about the fire at the oakland party?” a friend texted Ray Wan, waking him up at his San Francisco apartment at 12:37 a.m.

The electronic music fan ran in these circles with his friends Chelsea Dolan, who was a popular DJ, and Travis Hough, who counsels at-risk kids, but he was too tired from his software sales job Friday night to go out.

“No one can get in touch with johnny igaz or chelsea who were at the party,” his friend texted.

“They (sic) place went up in flames.”

Still groggy, Wan was confused.

“What!? … Was Chelsea djing?” he texted back.

His friend sent screenshots of Facebook posts from others who had escaped and were panicking about their friends. “The whole buildings in flames,” one wrote.

“Omfg,” wrote another.

Wan tried to call Dolan, who is known as Cherushii and was set to perform at the party. They shared the same taste in music, and he remembers watching the 33-year-old San Francisco woman perform a couple weeks earlier at a house party. The call went directly to voicemail. Something was wrong.

Around 1:30 a.m., Almena, who had skipped the party, posted on Facebook a message he would later regret: “Confirmed. Everything I worked so hard for is gone. Blessed that my children and Micah were at a hotel safe and sound… it’s as if i have awoken from a dream filled with opulence and hope…. To be standing now in poverty of self worth.”

The post quickly went viral, drawing hundreds of outraged replies from across the globe about a man who seemed to care more about his fantastical creation than the devastation of so many lives lost. It would be days before he said in a television interview that he had made his Facebook comment before he knew anyone had died.

But others in the music scene knew the Ghost Ship was ripe for calamity.

Just before dawn, after an exhausting night, Robertson and his fire crew finally returned to Station 4. After filling out paperwork, he gathered his firefighters. They still didn’t know how many had perished inside. But they knew they hadn’t saved a single soul.

His shift over, Robertson — father of a 21-year-old daughter and a school-age son — showered and drove home. His wife greeted him when he walked in the door about 6 a.m. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. They embraced, and Robertson started sobbing. She had never seen him break down like that before.

The sun rose just after 7 a.m. Saturday. The Ghost Ship was smoldering as friends and families started gathering at the Alameda County Sheriff’s substation a few blocks away.

An Oakland firefighter climbs a ladder as authorities begin to recover victims of the Ghost Ship fire. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Wan, who had spent the night monitoring his cellphone, a police scanner and social media, drove past the warehouse on his way.

Holding a cup of coffee, Wan put out his cigarette and walked through the eerily quiet sheriff’s lobby, then gathered in a back room with the family and friends who had heard the news overnight. Survivors were there, too, wrapped in blankets, staring off in a daze. He hugged his friends and cried. Hope was fading, he said. “They would have reached out by now.”

Already a list of the missing was growing on the wall, including his friends. A police note asked for intimate descriptions of loved ones — identifiable markings, tattoos, piercings. Mayor Libby Schaaf would arrive to console the families waiting for word. She promised answers.

The second shift of firefighters at the warehouse were rolling up the door and pulling out charred debris — a piano, a sculpture, a sign that read “Come Drink” — to make a path inside. The graffiti art and block lettered “Ghost Ship” painted on the lavender-and-grey building facade was faded by blackened soot.

Crews stood on the roof of a building next door and peered through the collapsed roof. Light smoke wafted into the chilly morning air, and the enormity of the tragedy came into focus.

At about 7:20 a.m., Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed stood before a handful of reporters gathered on the curb.

“We have nine confirmed bodies,” she said, “and we’re unable to locate about 25 people.”
The reporters looked up from their notepads. A radio reporter frantically called his newsroom.

Soon, the Bay Area was waking up to the news. In South San Francisco, Kim and David Gregory were watching the reports on TV.

“I was just thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, another fire. Why is this always happening around Christmas?’ ’’ David Gregory said.

He had little reason to be concerned. His 20-year-old daughter, Michela, lived with them, but when she stayed out at night, he knew she was safe with her dependable boyfriend, Alex Vega.

Michela Gregory’s parents had watched the news about the fire when a friend called to ask if Michela and her boyfriend, Alex Vega, had returned from the party. (Courtesy David Vega)

But Michela’s good friend, Shannon Luppino, was frantic. She knew that the young couple had planned to attend the show at Ghost Ship, and since early Saturday morning, she and her friends had been trying to reach them. But each call rolled straight to voicemail.

Luppino knew she had to call Michela’s parents, but she could barely bring herself to tap in the number. She took a deep breath and thought, please God, let Michela be home.

Michela’s mother answered, with no hint of concern. But, no, she said Michela wasn’t there.

Luppino didn’t know quite what to say.

“On the news right now … there’s a big fire at a warehouse where they had a rave,” she said, “and I just hope that Michela came back from that.’’

Kim Gregory gasped and called for her husband.

Satellite trucks began multiplying at the intersection of 31st Avenue and International Boulevard as the peculiar scene of a parade celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe came into view. When a city worker in a bright yellow jacket diverted the procession, a DJ on one of the floats turned down the lively mariachi music as it passed the solemn ruins of the warehouse.

The parade passed Garcia’s appliance shop, where he and Gallo had met earlier that morning. Together, they watched their neighborhood — already infamous for the shooting of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station a few blocks away — become the scene of the deadliest fire in the country in 13 years.

In the days that followed, as the list of the dead grew from 9 to 24 and finally 36, the inevitable reactions set in: grief, guilt — and blame. All but one of the dead were visitors to the Ghost Ship.

Gallo feels responsible and powerless at the same time. He knew that place was a disaster waiting to happen, but what more should he have done? Complaints were logged. A city code enforcement inspector was sent. Gallo once even confronted Almena, telling him to stop throwing junk on the curb, “blocking the sidewalk like it was his.”

Even though Gallo said he was not the one causing the trouble, “I’m just as guilty for allowing it to happen,” he said. “I get that.”

Ryan Zaddy O’Keefe reassured his friend, the party promoter Jon Hrabko, that they had done everything they could when the fire broke out.

“I love you man,” O’Keefe wrote in a Facebook post Saturday morning to Hrabko. “I had to stop you from going back into the building.”

They saved a lot of people at the front door, he wrote. “Don’t ever let me hear you saying what u were saying about fault ever (expletive) again.”

Two days later at a vigil overlooking Lake Merritt where thousands of people gathered to share their grief, Ohr recalled the anguish he felt, standing outside the fire for hours, watching survivors desperately look for friends. “And knowing there is nothing you can do,” he said, choking up “… it’s the worst feeling.”

Schaaf, who had faced the media’s searing questions every day about the city’s failure to crack down on the Ghost Ship, attended the vigil and was booed at the podium.

“It’s part of my job to hear that and feel that,” she said, “because government has done painful things.”
While authorities still search for what sparked the deadly blaze, Alameda County’s district attorney has opened a criminal investigation to determine whether someone should be charged in the 36 deaths.

And Almena, who has been criticized again and again for creating the firetrap, apologized on national TV, saying he was just trying to build a “beautiful community.”

When “Today” host Matt Lauer asked if he should be blamed, the man behind the Ghost Ship didn’t know how to respond. “What am I going to say to that? …

“I’d rather get on the floor and be trampled by the parents,” Almena said, his voice rising. “I’d rather let them tear at my flesh than answer these ridiculous questions. I’m so sorry. I’m incredibly sorry.”

Kim and David Gregory aren’t thinking about that kind of vengeance, but they want answers. This week, along with 35 other families, they are planning a funeral. The Gregorys found some solace when they learned that when the bodies were found, it appeared Michela’s boyfriend, Alex, had wrapped his arms around her to shield her from danger.

For days after the tragedy, though, Kim Gregory kept the door to Michela’s bedroom shut, unable to bear the memories inside.

On Wednesday morning, she summoned the strength and turned the knob. The room with the bright green walls was just as Michela left it, her laptop and homework papers still scattered across the bed. Her mother tidied them up and pulled up the blankets. She vacuumed the floor and picked up Michela’s little stuffed llamas, drinking in her daughter’s scent.

“It was a healing process for me,” said Gregory, her voice breaking.

Finally, she turned to Michela’s makeup table and picked up a small round container filled with bright green glitter likeher daughter had worn that night. The lid of the jar was still loose — her daughter could never quite close the peanut butter either — and when Gregory picked it up Wednesday morning, glitter flew everywhere. She smiled, watching the sparkles settle on the table, the floor and the smooth covers of Michela’s bed.

The parents of Michela Gregory and Alex Vega gathered at a vigil at the Vegas’ San Bruno home. From left, David and Kimberly Gregory, Maria and Manuel Vega. (Josie Lepe/Bay Area News Group)

Staff writer Tracy Seipel contributed to this report.

Click here to read the stories of all 36 musicians, artists, students, lovers and friends who perished in the Ghost Ship fire. Follow ongoing coverage of the fire investigation and how Oakland is responding to the tragedy here.

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to immigration debates. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

Matthias Gafni is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He has reported and edited for Bay Area newspapers since he graduated from UC Davis, covering courts, crime, environment, science, child abuse, education, county and city government, and corruption. A Bay Area native, he loves his Warriors, Giants and 49ers. Send tips to 925-952-5026 or mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com. Send him an encrypted text on Signal at 408-921-8719.

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